Tomorrow Is Forever

by Gwen Bristow

  “For a crutch?” said the new-made Erich Kessler, with a note of his old bitterness.

  “I hope there will be a crutch,” Jacoby answered quietly. “Remember, I’ve promised nothing about your legs except to do the best I can with them.”

  “All right, all right, I know. A man isn’t hoping for too much in this world when he hopes for a crutch, is he?”

  Jacoby addressed him sternly. “My friend, until you can face what you’re up against now, you aren’t fit to try to go further.”

  There was a long silence. At last the patient said, “I get it, Jacoby. And—ah—thank you.”

  Jacoby stood up. ‘Thank you, for not being angry with me.”

  “Oh, shut up, will you?” He felt like changing the subject. “By the way, Jacoby, this Erich Kessler—me—am I a Jew like you?”

  “No, why? Were you a Jew at home?”

  “No, that’s why I asked. I thought if I was to be one here you’d better teach me something about the religious rituals. But if I’m not, then it’s not important.”

  Startling to remember now that there had been a time when one could say “It’s not important,” so carelessly, and then forget about it. There was nobody then to tell him that Erich Kessler’s not being a Jew was going to be so important later on that it would enable him to save Jacoby’s child.

  When he was up in a wheel-chair, he went to live with Jacoby. It was almost like living in a hospital. Jacoby had his own laboratory and surgery as part of the Berlin hospital. Patients came and went all day and half the night. There was still lack of food, drugs, trained assistants. Jacoby worked like a demon. Watching him work threw Kessler into dark periods of dismay at his own uselessness. When he spoke of this to Jacoby, he received one of the quiet, direct replies he had learned to expect from his friend.

  “Kessler, no man who genuinely wants to be of use in the world is ever useless for long. But that is a question you must answer for yourself. If I tried to answer it for you, I should be doing you an injury greater than any you have suffered. I should be telling you that it is no longer necessary for you to be responsible for your own conduct, and that is a crime I won’t commit against anybody.”

  Still trembling from the storm that had shattered him, Kessler found this hard to take. Later on he blessed Jacoby for having made him take it, refusing to let him sink into the childish dependency which at first seemed so comfortable a cushion for his tortured spirit. But since Jacoby did refuse, and his own bodily lassitude made his mind eager for activity, he had to search for a place he was capable of occupying. His first suggestion was made timidly.

  “Jacoby, I don’t know a thing about medicine or surgery, but if there’s one thing I do know it’s chemistry. Do you think I could learn to do some of these routine analyses that take up so much of your time? Blood-counts, and things like that?”

  “Why not?” Jacoby returned eagerly. “If you only knew how much I need a technician! I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He hurried off, and came back with an armful of books which he dumped by the table he had rigged up to match the wheel-chair. “Start with this one. If you have trouble with the vocabulary let me know.”

  Kessler felt a tingle of returning vigor. This would not be much, but it would be something toward repaying Jacoby. The prospect of making any kind of return was an immeasurable impetus.

  He went to work. He worked as hard as Jacoby would let him. Within a couple of weeks he was surprised to find his study interesting for its own sake. “I always thought I was burning up with curiosity about the universe,” he said to Jacoby, “but I’m ashamed to find how I neglected my own species. You don’t know how glad I am you’re letting me do this.”

  Jacoby shrugged. “Where did you get the impression I was ‘letting’ you do it? I need you. One of these days, when the country is normal again, maybe I’ll be able to get enough technicians. But now—!”

  Though at first Kessler undertook only the simplest routines in the laboratory, they absorbed all his energy. He was still far from strong. The work was new, his reports had to be made in a language he still found unwieldy, and learning to make one hand serve the purpose of two required a thousand adjustments. But it meant that he was back in the sphere of active men, doing something that needed to be done, and occupation relieved him of leisure for brooding.

  Much of Jacoby’s practice at this time dealt with reconstruction of wounded soldiers, and he got into the habit of coming to the laboratory for advice, at first to bolster his analyst’s returning assurance and later because he needed his counsel. For as the embittered wreck Arthur Kittredge

  gradually turned into the confident scientist Erich Kessler, the youthful violence of the first changed to the gentle wisdom of a man who had sunk into the ultimate hopelessness and had come back. Arthur Kittredge had wanted to die; Erich Kessler, after a long hard battle, wanted to live. Kessler wanted to live because at last he found other people more important than himself, and this came about because he found, at first to his own amazement, that he had something valuable to give them. While he still had to be carried to his wheel-chair and lifted out of it, his efforts to be of some use to Jacoby widened into his being of use to a great many others.

  As he progressed from elementary routines into tasks of more complexity, Kessler began to act as amanuensis for Jacoby as well as technician. He sat in a corner during Jacoby’s interviews with his patients, taking notes of their symptoms. As he never said anything, his presence came to be accepted like that of the furniture in the consulting-room. Then, gradually, he fell into the habit of letting the patients talk to him if they called when Jacoby was otherwise occupied. He began to learn how many others there were besides himself who had to recover from the impact that physical disability had made on their lives. Jacoby had profound wisdom for these people, but sometimes, looking at Jacoby’s healthy body, they did not believe it. When they looked at Kessler, still limp in his wheel-chair, they knew he knew what they were talking about.

  So they talked to him, bringing him their own experience of despair. As he listened to all these men and women who wanted to die he began to see with startling clearness how little reason many of them had ever had for wanting to live. They had never been interested in anything but their own sensations. In a world sick with confusion, they were aware of nothing but their personal despondency, and they angrily resisted being made aware of anything else. As he heard them he thought he heard himself, bounded by tremendous trivialities, crying out against a destiny that forced him to look beyond these for a reason to stay alive. So many of these people could expect far more bodily power than he could. So many of them could take a real step in the march of civilization if they could first be persuaded to carry their own burdens. He tried to tell them this.

  Often he failed, for he learned that there were a great many men and women in the world who would literally rather die than admit that their own characters had room for improvement. But sometimes he succeeded, and when he succeeded he felt the ecstasy of creation. Even when he was allowed to stand up, with a crutch on his right side and

  Jacoby’s arm supporting him on the other, and he actually walked a couple of steps on legs that had been idle four years, his sense of triumph was not as great as when he had managed to convince another human being that there was no real defeat except that of giving up the battle. He had not won his own battle yet. He never would win it completely. By this time he had become reconciled to the knowledge that no matter how he fought there would be periods when he would sit alone in his room sobbing like a child that he couldn’t take it; but he knew also that these periods were temporary, and that he could take it.

  When Germany had entered into a season of quiet that deceived innocent persons like himself and Jacoby into believing that it was recovering from the war, he got in touch with a private investigating agency and found out what had become of Elizabeth. He was tol
d that she was living in California, married and the mother of a son. The news hurt him a great deal more deeply than he had thought it would. Was it conceivable, he asked himself, that he had expected her to spend her life remembering him? Yes, it was conceivable; that was exactly what the primitive, possessive part of himself had wanted her to do, and now this part of himself was leaping up from where he had buried it, enraged that she had accepted her freedom. He tried to bury it again, though it was a long time before he succeeded in doing so. But during that time, pretending to himself that he had done so helped him go on about his business.

  This business had become writing case-histories of the patients whose lives had come under his own and Jacoby’s care. Disguising their personal circumstances, he had drama enough for a thousand volumes. His only experience of writing had been in putting out technical pamphlets for the oil industry, but he had learned from this to say what he had to say plainly enough to be understood. Without any literary genius, he had learned to think clearly, and fortunately his present subject required clearness rather than rhetoric.

  His books were widely read in Germany before Hitler had the power to order them burnt, and two of them were bought for motion pictures by French studios. With his hospital consultations and his writing, Kessler had more work than he could do. He was not as happy as he had been. This he did not expect, but he had the triumphant knowledge that he had built a worthwhile career on the ruins.

  In the meantime Jacoby had married a brilliant girl named Ricarda. Much younger than her husband, Ricarda was already showing a devotion to science equal to his, and after their marriage they worked together. She and Jacoby were passionately in love. Though sometimes the sight of their happy marriage made Kessler feel like a pauper standing in the snow to look through a lighted window, he tried not to let them suspect it. They had been his friends before their marriage, and afterwards they remained so.

  They knew there was an Austrian fanatic named Hitler, but beyond laughing at his bad German when they heard it on the radio they had been too busy to pay much attention to him. None of them had ever been interested in politics. It was easy to see now that they should have been. But they were not, and when they heard Hitler’s fantastic threats it did not occur to them to believe him. When Jacoby and Ricarda finally realized the persecution directed at them, it was already full-grown and too strong to be escaped.

  They had tried to escape. But it was too late. They who had saved so many others could not save themselves. The force of evil closed around them so tight that at last it crushed even their gallant spirits. The Nazis succeeded in doing to Jacoby what the war had not been able to do: they destroyed his faith and with it his courage. So today the great Dr. Jacoby and his wife were only two more of Germany’s uncounted Jewish suicides.

  Kessler had not been able to save them, but through the connivance of some of Jacoby’s friends who were risking their lives along with his to help him, he had managed to save their little girl. He got Margaret into France, her surname changed from Jacoby to Kessler on the passport, and a French representative of Vertex Studios met him at the frontier with tickets to Paris. Once in France, he discovered that the American studios were hiring writers, directors, actors and producers from Germany as fast as permits could be obtained in Washington, with a grimly gleeful “Thank you, Mr. Hitler!” as the finest cinema talent of the Old World poured into Hollywood. It was not difficult for him to get an American contract.

  Two weeks after he left Ellis Island he was working in New York. A little while later he and Margaret came to California. As his own language returned to him, he taught her to speak English. She was a happy little girl now, going to school, though she had not forgotten Germany. He wished it had happened when she was younger. But he had learned not to look back. If a man was to keep any sanity in these times, the only view was forward. He did not know what was going to become of Margaret. It was scarcely possible that his own overtaxed strength could hold out as long as she would need him. But he had learned too that though one only looked ahead, one did not need to tax his powers with apprehension.

  Through the windows of his office Kessler watched the late sun on the hills beyond, glowing on the slopes while the folds between filled with purple shadow. Dry odors of dust and sagebrush blew in toward him. Around his bungalow were the friendly noises of the day’s end, doors closing, cars starting, voices, calling “See you tomorrow!” In a few minutes Spratt Herlong would come for him.

  Surprising, how simple it was now, to be about to see Elizabeth. He had expected never to see her again. He had made another life for himself without her. But now that the Nazis had smashed that life, taking away his work and his friends, forcing his frail powers to the effort of still another beginning, it did not seem too much to ask that at least he might find Elizabeth in happy possession of all he had made possible for her. When he had seen her, tranquil and assured as she was meant to be, he would know that he had accomplished something in his lifetime. He could be satisfied that neither war nor Nazis had conquered him completely.

  He wanted to see her now; for a long time he could not have said that. Even as lately as ten years ago he would not have cared to undertake it. But there was such a thing as having moved beyond resentment, beyond envy, beyond any demand of his own ego. There was a certain austere happiness in having mastered himself so completely. A cold happiness it was, to be sure, and a lonely one, but at least it did mean peace.

  7

  There’s the car,” said Elizabeth. “Remember, both of you, not to take any notice of his misfortunes.”

  Cherry laughed at her reproachfully. “Mother, we’re not savages! We don’t stare at cripples.”

  “I know, dear, but sometimes the best of us give a little start when we see persons very different from ourselves. We don’t mean to.”

  Cherry and Dick promised to be models of good behavior. Elizabeth got up and went to the door opening from the living room into the entry. She hoped Mr. Kessler would have a comfortable evening. Entertaining Spratt’s business associates was a duty they were all used to, and the older children adapted themselves to it well enough. Brian begged to be let off when there were strangers in to dine, so as usual he had had his dinner early and was now upstairs in his room pottering over his natural history collections. Spratt opened the front door, saying,

  “Here we are, Kessler. And here’s my wife. Elizabeth, my friend Erich Kessler that you’ve already heard so much about.”

  Elizabeth looked up with the smile that Spratt characterized as the masterpiece of the accomplished hostess, “not bright enough to look insincere, but not strained enough to look dutiful. Just in between, gracious.”

  Mr. Kessler’s physical handicaps had threatened to make this occasion difficult, but Elizabeth’s initial glance dispelled her apprehension. He was badly crippled, but he did not appear resentful; he faced the world before him with a grave acceptance, as though all the fault he had to find with destiny had been got over long ago. As their eyes met Elizabeth was struck with an impression that she had seen Mr. Kessler somewhere before.

  It also seemed to her that Mr. Kessler was looking at her with an unusual interest. His eyes went over her swiftly and inclusively, taking in her hair, her face, her dress, every detail of her as though it were important that he should know all about her as soon as possible. It was the way a man might have looked at a famous personage he had long been eager to meet, or a woman so astoundingly beautiful that he wanted to impress her forever upon his memory. Elizabeth was not famous, and while she was not ugly she was no ravishing beauty either. She thought it might mean that they really had seen each other somewhere, and he like herself was trying to identify the recollection. If her own sense of familiarity persisted she could ask him about it later on.

  All this was only a quick flutter in her mind, pushed aside in an instant while her attention turned itself to its immediate concerns. She took in his appearance
quickly: a big man of more powerful build than she had expected, bent over a heavy cane with a dependence that told her instantly that she should not expect him to shake hands; iron-gray hair receding at the temples, a thick beard, a scar that rippled up his right cheek, dark eyes with a line of concentration between the eyebrows and crinkles of kindness at the outer corners, and a pleasant smile—what she could see of it between the whiskers—a very pleasant smile indeed. If he had any idea that this was not their first meeting he gave no evidence of it, for all he said to her was, “How do you do, Mrs. Herlong,” with the stateliness she had learned to expect from Europeans. Elizabeth indicated the room beyond.

  “Come in by the fire, Mr. Kessler. These are my children.”

  Dick was standing, with that mixture of assurance and awkwardness that made her find boys in their teens so eminently kissable just when they most resisted being kissed by their mothers. Cherry, with fewer years but more social graces than Dick would acquire for another decade, sat smiling a welcome to the newcomer. Elizabeth introduced them, and again it seemed to her that Kessler was regarding them with an attention extraordinary in a man who could hardly be supposed to have any interest in them. There was an alertness in the way he spoke to Dick and Cherry, as though he had decided in advance that he was going to be fond of them and hoped they would respond. He said, “Your father has told me a great deal about you, and has shown me your pictures. I am so glad to see you.”

  Dick, who had already said “How do you do,” tried to look pleasant without knowing what else to say, while Cherry, a shade too adept at social fibs, answered, “He has told us lots about you too, Mr. Kessler,” with such a bright smile that Elizabeth privately reminded herself, “I’ve got to warn Cherry about that sort of thing, if she isn’t careful she’s going to be an intolerable gusher before she’s twenty.” Kessler appeared to be finding them the most attractive youngsters on earth. While she was offering him the chair she had intended for him, arranged with a little table at its side so he could set down his glass when the hors d’oeuvres appeared, she added to herself, “Spratt must have led him to expect a most remarkable pair of children, he really shouldn’t—or is Mr. Kessler as charming as this with everybody?” Spratt, evidently pleased at the good impression his offspring were making, crossed the room to the door leading upstairs, explaining that Kessler had had time to wash up in his bungalow before leaving the lot, but he himself had not, and if they’d forgive him he’d go up and make himself presentable. “I’ll leave you with the family, Kessler,” he concluded.